Madgirl.org

For the past few years, the novels I have read have been largely of similar genres (notably, YA and urban fantasy). I ascribe this to two things: (1) being in law school, and therefore not having the time to read as much as I normally would; and (2) getting serious about my own writing (post-Clarion) and feeling compelled to stay abreast of what is out there in the genre I’ve been writing in myself. A side effect of this is that it has been quite a while since I have read something new where the writing style has stood out to me in a significant way. Which really is a shame, because I’ll tell anyone who will listen that Margaret Atwood has been an amazing literary inspiration to me ever since I read Cat’s Eye when I was fifteen, and this is as much because of the way she writes as what she writes. (As a side note, I will say that though I agree that it is very, very difficult to write well in first person – and have seen it done exceedingly badly – that when it is done right, it can be breathtaking.)

But I digress. My point is that I finally finished The Magicians, thanks to my dear friend (and maven) putting it into my hands and poking me incessantly until I put some serious time into it, because she desperately wanted to discuss it. Which, in point of fact, is a pretty fantastic endorsement of a book (and by the way, I put Turn Coat into her hands for the same reason). Anyway, now I have finished it, and as you have probably deduced by now, pretty much adored it, and this was (again) as much because of the way it was written as what was written.

So though I rarely write full-fledged book reviews here, I feel compelled. I will try to be light on spoilers (for those of you who may be considering picking it up), but still, the remainder of this discussion after the jump…

Actually, first, another brief digression. While I was reading the book, I happened to have a discussion in a seminar (the topic of which is devoted in part to learning sciences) about the culture of intellectualism in the United States and why and how it came to be that being “smart” is not “cool.” I feel like this is changing a little (though I could be wrong, as it’s been nearly a decade since high school), maybe because technology is pretty hip now, but there will probably always be a divide between a lot of the smart kids and a lot of the popular kids.

So that was what struck me first about the plot of this book; magicians are the smart kids. The really smart ones, the ones that largely got picked on in school and went to math camps in the summer and took the SATs when they were 12 (I did this, but I didn’t even break a thousand, good thing I improved before college). Because magic is hard – it’s not just saying a few words and waving a wand. Don’t they make it look easy in Harry Potter? Sure, you have to get the inflection right – “Wingardium Levi-OH-sa!” – but it’s not like you’re having to solve equations. Grossman’s magicians do. There’s a whole new world out there and it’s only accessible to the intellectual – and we’re not just talking about the awed picture you get of the universe after you read (and vaguely understand) A Brief History of Time. This is magic. And the geeks shall inherit the earth.

Moving on – I can’t tell you exactly what it is about how Grossman turns a phrase that I find so noteworthy. Something about the seamless inclusion of small details, coupled with pretty sparse prose. I am a reader who, unless there is something interesting about the way it’s written, tends to glaze over on long paragraphs of description. And this actually goes double for long descriptions of action as opposed to setting. I’m far more interested in what characters are saying and what they’re thinking than what they’re doing. I generally despise fight scenes in books, for example. I recognize that this is a personal taste quirk, but it still meant that Grossman’s writing suited me quite a lot – though it also meant that I preferred the first two thirds of the book to the last third. If you read it, you’ll get what I mean by this. Not that the story wasn’t worth the journey, but there was a lot about the last part that felt like a different book. I’m not entirely sure if this was intentional or not because, in a way, it makes a lot of sense, particularly given the way that the protagonist’s character development.

Like so many books, there was a secondary character that grabbed my attention: Eliot. It wasn’t even that I liked the character as much as that he was fascinating and well-drawn – but not so well-drawn that I knew everything about him, which made him all the more interesting. By the end of the book, I felt as if I knew every nook and cranny of Quentin (the protagonist), and I didn’t particularly like all of them (which is often the mark of a good character, to be honest) – but Eliot felt very real to me because of the way that I wanted to get more into his head. I rather think that Quentin felt the same way.

I had a long conversation recently with a writer friend about the pitfalls of convention. (Translation: he berated me severely for wanting werewolves in my novel.) And so one of the things that particularly struck me about The Magicians is that it walked this line in a good way. Anyone who reads the book jacket and says “Oh, magical school! Harry Potter rip-off!” is an idiot (just like anyone who thinks that you can have a monopoly on fairies). Worldbuilding that involves an entirely new system of magic is hard. I will say that there are places where this world is not entirely fleshed out, but I think that’s largely because it’s so much in the protagonist’s head. Having a protagonist with a streak of self-absorption can wreak havoc on your worldbuilding. (I actually think that Harry Potter is often an example of this, and that one of the reasons that fan fiction writers can have a field day is that some characters – particularly the adults – are drawn just well enough to be interesting but not rigid, because frankly, Harry just doesn’t care enough about, say, Remus Lupin’s personal life.)

As this has grown into an essay, I’ll cut myself off here. I heard somewhere that there may be a sequel in the works, and if so, I would be interested to see if some of the pace and style of the early part of this book could survive the changes to protagonist and world by the end. Also, I’m glad that the book is doing so well, because I think that it’s a good example of outside-the-box fantasy; i.e., unlike many of the books I’ve been reading lately, I would recommend this not just to someone who likes “fantasy” but to someone who, well, likes to read.

And now I have a copy of Margaret Atwood’s new book patiently awaiting. This is a good year for reading.